The Oak and the Reed
Encyclopedia
The Oak and the Reed is one of Aesop's Fables
and is numbered 70 in the Perry Index
. It appears in many versions: in some it is with many reeds that the oak converses and in a late rewritten version it disputes with a willow.
. They deal with the contrasting behaviour of the oak, which trusts in its strength to withstand the storm and is blown over, and the reed that 'bends with the wind' and so survives. Most early sources see it as a parable about pride and humility, providing advice on how to survive in turbulent times. This in turn gave rise to various proverbs such as 'Better bend than break' and 'A reed before the wind lives on, while mighty oaks do fall', the earliest occurrence of which is in Geoffrey Chaucer
's Troilus and Criseyde
(II.1387-9). It so happens that there is an overlap here with the old Chinese proverb 'A tree that is unbending is easily broken'. The saying originally occurred in the religious classic, the Tao Te Ching
, with the commentary that 'The hard and strong will fall, the soft and weak will overcome'.
A variant Greek version of the fable substituted an olive tree for the oak. The tree taunts the reed for its frailty and yielding to every wind but the reed does not answer back. The wisdom of its behaviour becomes apparent when the tree is snapped in the buffeting of a storm. Similar advice, evidence that the fable was then current among Jews, is given in the Talmud
(Tanis 20a), where the saying 'Be pliable like a reed, not rigid like a cedar' is attributed to Rabbi Simeon ben Eleazar
. Although the fable with an oak has prevailed over the one with an olive, a group of 16th century fabulists preferred the latter version. They include the French author Gilles Corrozet (1547) and two Italians, Gabriele Faerno
(1564) and Giovanni Maria Verdizotti. In Heinrich Steinhowel
's 1479 edition of the fables a fir tree (tanne, Latin abies in bilingual editions) is the protagonist. This suggests that the fable has become confused with that of The Fir and the Bramble
, in which another tree that trusts in its superior qualities is bested. However, that too appears independently in Steinhowel's collection as "The Thornbush and the Fir" (Der Dornbusch und die Tanne). Ultimately all these versions refer back to the ancient genre of Near East
ern dispute poems which also included the tamarisk and the palm as disputants, and the poplar and the laurel.
When the fable figured in 16th century emblem book
s, more emphasis was put on the moral lesson to be learned, to which the story acted as a mere appendage. Thus Hadrianus Junius
tells the fable in a four-line Latin poem and follows it with a lengthy commentary, part of which reads: 'By contrast we see the reed obstinately holding out against the power of cloudy storms, and overcoming the onrush of the skies, its salvation lying in no other protection than a modicum of patience. It is just the same in the case of a just and balanced spirit, which cares not for invincible strength and defeats malice and other evils by patient endurance, and achieves great riches by the acquisition of undying glory - whereas boldness more often than not has its downfall.' Geoffrey Whitney
borrowed Hadrianus' illustration for his own Choice of Emblemes (1586), devoting one stanza of his poem to the fable and the second to its lesson:
Interpretations of the fable began to change after Jean de la Fontaine
's more nuanced retelling, Le chêne et le roseau (Fables I.22). Here the oak has compassion on the reed's fragility and offers it protection, to which the reed politely replies that it has its own strategy for survival, 'I bend and do not break'. This is then put to the test when a storm breaks and brings the oak's 'head that was neighbour to the sky' on a level with the roots 'that touched the empire of the dead'. Written in the autocratic time of Louis XIV of France
, this was so successfully achieved that it appeared to teach the value of humility at the same time as suggesting that rulers may not be as powerful as they think themselves. So current did that sly interpretation become that Achille Etna Michallon
's later painting of "The Oak and the Reed" (Fitzwilliam Museum
, 1816) could easily be seen as a reference to the recent fall of the Emperor Napoleon I
.
In democratic times, the conduct of the reed came to be seen as cowardly and self-serving and the fable began to be rewritten from this point of view. In Robert Dodsley
's collection of 1761 it appears as "The Oak and the Willow", in which the willow challenges the oak to a trial of strength in withstanding a storm. The oak puts up a heroic fight and, after it falls, condemns the willow's conduct as mean and cowardly. An 1802 American rhymed version of this draws the political conclusion even more strongly. Set 'within the commonwealth of trees', it presents the two trees as sharing in its government. When a storm 'threatens the constitution of the state', the willow cringes acquiescently while the oak goes down fighting, but will not acknowledge the willow as the ultimate victor.
Much the same point was made in Jean Anouilh
's reinterpretation of the story in 1962. There the oak asks the reed if it doesn't find La Fontaine's fable morally detestable. The reed's answer is that the limited concerns of 'we little folk' will see them better through testing times than taking the moral high ground. When once again the oak falls in the storm, the reed jeeringly asks if he had not foreseen the outcome correctly. The tree's answer to the reed's envious hatred is simply, 'But I am still an oak'.
(1565), ‘The way the picture should be drawn is straightforward: in it, one of the winds is blowing with puffed-out cheeks, breaking up the huge trees in its way, pulling them up, uprooting them and flinging them around; but a patch of reeds survives unscathed.’ Other contemporary examples of this approach are in Bernard Salomon (1554) and Hieronymus Osius
(1564).
Some variations depend on the version of the fable that is being recorded. In the version by Samuel Croxall
(1732), which was widely followed, the uprooted oak is floating downstream and enquires of a reed how it has survived the storm. In George Fyler Townsend
's new translation (1867), the oak has fallen across a stream and asks the same question of the reeds there.
With the growing interest in landscape art
, many French artists availed themselves of the fable's dramatic possibilities, including the illustrator Gustave Doré
, who made two different woodcuts of a peasant struggling through stormy landscapes and another of a horseman unseated by the falling oak. Achille Michallon's landscape of 1816 (of which there is also a black-and-white print) is said to be inspired by the style of Jacob Ruisdael. Jules Coignet
's picturesque treatment in the Musée Jean de La Fontaine dates from the second quarter of the 19th century and is a study of different textures of light as it falls on the windswept reeds and the foliage of the fallen oak. This is dramatised even further in the Japanese woodcut version of the fable by Kajita Hanko, published at the end of the century in the Choix de Fables de La Fontaine, Illustrée par un Groupe des Meilleurs Artistes de Tokio (1894), which has an olive rather than an oak as subject. Contrasting light effects are equally the subject of Henri Harpignies
's sombrely coloured drawing in the Musée Jean de La Fontaine. The fable was also included in the series of watercolours based on La Fontaine that was painted by Gustave Moreau about 1880.
The turn of the century saw a statue of the subject by Henri Coutheillas exhibited in Paris. It is now in the Jardin d'Orsay in Limoges and contrasts a swaying female nude with the grizzled giant clutching a broken branch in his hand who is tumbling at her feet. During the 20th century there were a number of prints made by prominent artists. They include Marc Chagall
's etching
from his La Fontaine series (1952), Roland Oudot's coloured woodcut (1961) and Salvador Dalí's coloured print of 1974.
in the concert they shared in 1842. In the 20th century the fashion was for slang versions. One of the first appeared among the seven published in 1945 by Bernard Gelval which afterwards became part of the sung repertoire of the actor Yves Deniaud. It was followed in 1947 by the second volume of 15 fables célèbres racontées en argot (famous fables in slang) by 'Marcus', in which Le Chêne et le Roseau was included. While this keeps fairly closely to La Fontaine's text, Pierre Perret
's 1990 rap version is a looser adaptation of the fable into a series of quatrains with a refrain
in between. The mighty oak 'stacked like the Himalayas' talks down to the reed in its marsh where 'up there the winds whizz and down 'ere's rheumatiz' (En haut t'as le mistral en bas les rhumatismes) but his pity is rejected and the fate soon to overtake him foretold. Cartoons were eventually made of these versions and released on DVD under the title The Geometric Fables; "The oak and the reed" appeared in volume 3 of the series (Les Chiffres, 1991).
In 1965 a poetic version by Peter Westmore was included as the last piece in Edward Hughes' Songs from Aesop's Fables for children's voices and piano. Two groups from Quebec have made use of the fable more recently. The deathcore band Despised Icon
recorded their version on the album Consumed by your Poison in 2002. The grunted lyrics parallel La Fontaine's narrative: the reed rejects the protection offered by the oak for its own pliable behaviour. After the storm 'The one who thought himself so strong now among the dead belongs' (Celui qui se croyait si fort réside maintenant parmi les morts). There is also a folk-rock adaptation by Les Cowboys Fringants
recorded on their 2008 album L’Expédition. The lyrics emphasise how holding to one's point of view isolates individuals but seem to recommend the reed's strategy for survival in the words of the refrain that one must 'fall to rise again' (tomber pour se relever) repeatedly. Another musical interpretation of the fable is Michael Galasso
's incidental music for the segment based on the fable in Robert Wilson
's production of Les Fables de La Fontaine for the Comédie-Française
(2004).
Aesop's Fables
Aesop's Fables or the Aesopica are a collection of fables credited to Aesop, a slave and story-teller believed to have lived in ancient Greece between 620 and 560 BCE. The fables remain a popular choice for moral education of children today...
and is numbered 70 in the Perry Index
Perry Index
The Perry Index is a widely-used index of "Aesop's Fables" or "Aesopica", the fables credited to Aesop, the story-teller who lived in ancient Greece between 620 and 560 BC...
. It appears in many versions: in some it is with many reeds that the oak converses and in a late rewritten version it disputes with a willow.
The story and its interpretation
There are early Greek versions of this fable and a 5th century Latin version by AvianusAvianus
Avianus, a Latin writer of fables, generally placed in the 5th century, and identified as a pagan.The 42 fables which bear his name are dedicated to a certain Theodosius, whose learning is spoken of in most flattering terms. He may possibly be Macrobius Ambrosius Theodosius, the author of...
. They deal with the contrasting behaviour of the oak, which trusts in its strength to withstand the storm and is blown over, and the reed that 'bends with the wind' and so survives. Most early sources see it as a parable about pride and humility, providing advice on how to survive in turbulent times. This in turn gave rise to various proverbs such as 'Better bend than break' and 'A reed before the wind lives on, while mighty oaks do fall', the earliest occurrence of which is in Geoffrey Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer , known as the Father of English literature, is widely considered the greatest English poet of the Middle Ages and was the first poet to have been buried in Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey...
's Troilus and Criseyde
Troilus and Criseyde
Troilus and Criseyde is a poem by Geoffrey Chaucer which re-tells in Middle English the tragic story of the lovers Troilus and Criseyde set against a backdrop of war in the Siege of Troy. It was composed using rime royale and probably completed during the mid 1380s. Many Chaucer scholars regard it...
(II.1387-9). It so happens that there is an overlap here with the old Chinese proverb 'A tree that is unbending is easily broken'. The saying originally occurred in the religious classic, the Tao Te Ching
Tao Te Ching
The Tao Te Ching, Dao De Jing, or Daodejing , also simply referred to as the Laozi, whose authorship has been attributed to Laozi, is a Chinese classic text...
, with the commentary that 'The hard and strong will fall, the soft and weak will overcome'.
A variant Greek version of the fable substituted an olive tree for the oak. The tree taunts the reed for its frailty and yielding to every wind but the reed does not answer back. The wisdom of its behaviour becomes apparent when the tree is snapped in the buffeting of a storm. Similar advice, evidence that the fable was then current among Jews, is given in the Talmud
Talmud
The Talmud is a central text of mainstream Judaism. It takes the form of a record of rabbinic discussions pertaining to Jewish law, ethics, philosophy, customs and history....
(Tanis 20a), where the saying 'Be pliable like a reed, not rigid like a cedar' is attributed to Rabbi Simeon ben Eleazar
Simeon ben Eleazar
Simeon ben Eleazar was a Jewish Tanna sage of the fourth generation, and one of Rabbi Meir's disciples. He is cited in the Mishnah merely few times, but on the Tosefta and Baraitas' portions that are quoted in the Talmud his name is mentioned many times...
. Although the fable with an oak has prevailed over the one with an olive, a group of 16th century fabulists preferred the latter version. They include the French author Gilles Corrozet (1547) and two Italians, Gabriele Faerno
Gabriele Faerno
Gabriele Faerno, also known by his Latin name of Faernus Cremonensis, was born in Cremona about 1510 and died in Rome on November 17, 1561. He was a scrupulous scholar and an elegant Latin poet who is best known now for his collection of Aesop's Fables in Latin verse.-Life:Gabriele Faerno was born...
(1564) and Giovanni Maria Verdizotti. In Heinrich Steinhowel
Heinrich Steinhowel
Heinrich Steinhöwel was a Swabian author, humanist, and translator who was much inspired by the Italian Renaissance...
's 1479 edition of the fables a fir tree (tanne, Latin abies in bilingual editions) is the protagonist. This suggests that the fable has become confused with that of The Fir and the Bramble
The Fir and the Bramble
The Fir and the Bramble is one of Aesop's Fables and is numbered 304 in the Perry Index. It is one of a group in which trees and plants debate together, which also includes The Trees and the Bramble and The Oak and the Reed...
, in which another tree that trusts in its superior qualities is bested. However, that too appears independently in Steinhowel's collection as "The Thornbush and the Fir" (Der Dornbusch und die Tanne). Ultimately all these versions refer back to the ancient genre of Near East
Near East
The Near East is a geographical term that covers different countries for geographers, archeologists, and historians, on the one hand, and for political scientists, economists, and journalists, on the other...
ern dispute poems which also included the tamarisk and the palm as disputants, and the poplar and the laurel.
When the fable figured in 16th century emblem book
Emblem book
Emblem books are a category of mainly didactic illustrated book printed in Europe during the 16th and 17th centuries, typically containing a number of emblematic images with explanatory text....
s, more emphasis was put on the moral lesson to be learned, to which the story acted as a mere appendage. Thus Hadrianus Junius
Hadrianus Junius
Hadrianus Junius , also known as Adriaen de Jonghe, was a Dutch physician, classical scholar, translator, lexicographer, antiquarian, historiographer, emblematist, school rector, and Latin poet. He is not to be confused with several namesakes...
tells the fable in a four-line Latin poem and follows it with a lengthy commentary, part of which reads: 'By contrast we see the reed obstinately holding out against the power of cloudy storms, and overcoming the onrush of the skies, its salvation lying in no other protection than a modicum of patience. It is just the same in the case of a just and balanced spirit, which cares not for invincible strength and defeats malice and other evils by patient endurance, and achieves great riches by the acquisition of undying glory - whereas boldness more often than not has its downfall.' Geoffrey Whitney
Geoffrey Whitney
Geoffrey Whitney was an English poet, now best known for the influence on Elizabethan writing of the Choice of Emblemes that he compiled.-Life:...
borrowed Hadrianus' illustration for his own Choice of Emblemes (1586), devoting one stanza of his poem to the fable and the second to its lesson:
-
- When Envie, Hate, Contempte, and Slaunder, rage:
- Which are the stormes and tempestes of this life;
- With patience then, wee must the combat wage,
- And not with force resist their deadlie strife:
- But suffer still, and then wee shall, in fine,
- Our foes subdue, when they with shame shall pine.
Interpretations of the fable began to change after Jean de la Fontaine
Jean de La Fontaine
Jean de La Fontaine was the most famous French fabulist and one of the most widely read French poets of the 17th century. He is known above all for his Fables, which provided a model for subsequent fabulists across Europe and numerous alternative versions in France, and in French regional...
's more nuanced retelling, Le chêne et le roseau (Fables I.22). Here the oak has compassion on the reed's fragility and offers it protection, to which the reed politely replies that it has its own strategy for survival, 'I bend and do not break'. This is then put to the test when a storm breaks and brings the oak's 'head that was neighbour to the sky' on a level with the roots 'that touched the empire of the dead'. Written in the autocratic time of Louis XIV of France
Louis XIV of France
Louis XIV , known as Louis the Great or the Sun King , was a Bourbon monarch who ruled as King of France and Navarre. His reign, from 1643 to his death in 1715, began at the age of four and lasted seventy-two years, three months, and eighteen days...
, this was so successfully achieved that it appeared to teach the value of humility at the same time as suggesting that rulers may not be as powerful as they think themselves. So current did that sly interpretation become that Achille Etna Michallon
Achille Etna Michallon
Achille Etna Michallon was a French painter.Michallon was the son of the sculptor Claude Michallon. He studied under Jacques-Louis David and Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes. In 1817, Michallon won the inaugural Prix de Rome for landscape painting. He travelled to Italy in 1818 and remained there for...
's later painting of "The Oak and the Reed" (Fitzwilliam Museum
Fitzwilliam Museum
The Fitzwilliam Museum is the art and antiquities museum of the University of Cambridge, located on Trumpington Street opposite Fitzwilliam Street in central Cambridge, England. It receives around 300,000 visitors annually. Admission is free....
, 1816) could easily be seen as a reference to the recent fall of the Emperor Napoleon I
Napoleon I
Napoleon Bonaparte was a French military and political leader during the latter stages of the French Revolution.As Napoleon I, he was Emperor of the French from 1804 to 1815...
.
In democratic times, the conduct of the reed came to be seen as cowardly and self-serving and the fable began to be rewritten from this point of view. In Robert Dodsley
Robert Dodsley
Robert Dodsley was an English bookseller and miscellaneous writer.-Life:He was born near Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, where his father was master of the free school....
's collection of 1761 it appears as "The Oak and the Willow", in which the willow challenges the oak to a trial of strength in withstanding a storm. The oak puts up a heroic fight and, after it falls, condemns the willow's conduct as mean and cowardly. An 1802 American rhymed version of this draws the political conclusion even more strongly. Set 'within the commonwealth of trees', it presents the two trees as sharing in its government. When a storm 'threatens the constitution of the state', the willow cringes acquiescently while the oak goes down fighting, but will not acknowledge the willow as the ultimate victor.
-
-
-
- I am an Oak, tho' fall'n indeed!
- Thou still a vile and skulking weed,
- Rais'd by no merit of thine own,
- But by the blast that laid me prone.
- Say, if thou canst, what plant or tree,
- Except a sycophant like thee,
- Devoted to intrigue and strife,
- Who'd e'er prefer a dastard's life,
- Preserv'd by guile and crafty saws,
- To falling in a GLORIOUS CAUSE?
-
-
Much the same point was made in Jean Anouilh
Jean Anouilh
Jean Marie Lucien Pierre Anouilh was a French dramatist whose career spanned five decades. Though his work ranged from high drama to absurdist farce, Anouilh is best known for his 1943 play Antigone, an adaptation of Sophocles' Classical drama, that was seen as an attack on Marshal Pétain's...
's reinterpretation of the story in 1962. There the oak asks the reed if it doesn't find La Fontaine's fable morally detestable. The reed's answer is that the limited concerns of 'we little folk' will see them better through testing times than taking the moral high ground. When once again the oak falls in the storm, the reed jeeringly asks if he had not foreseen the outcome correctly. The tree's answer to the reed's envious hatred is simply, 'But I am still an oak'.
Artistic interpretations
Since this is one of the rare fables without human or animal characters, the subject has been a gift to artists and illustrators. From the earliest printed editions, the makers of woodcuts have taken pleasure in contrasting diagonals with the verticals and horizontals of the picture space, as well as the textures of the pliable reed and the sturdy tree trunk. Among 16th century emblem-makers there was even a prescription for how the scene should be presented. According to Hadrianus JuniusHadrianus Junius
Hadrianus Junius , also known as Adriaen de Jonghe, was a Dutch physician, classical scholar, translator, lexicographer, antiquarian, historiographer, emblematist, school rector, and Latin poet. He is not to be confused with several namesakes...
(1565), ‘The way the picture should be drawn is straightforward: in it, one of the winds is blowing with puffed-out cheeks, breaking up the huge trees in its way, pulling them up, uprooting them and flinging them around; but a patch of reeds survives unscathed.’ Other contemporary examples of this approach are in Bernard Salomon (1554) and Hieronymus Osius
Hieronymus Osius
Hieronymus Osius was a German Neo-Latin poet and academic about whom there are few biographical details. He was born about 1530 in Schlotheim and murdered in 1575 in Graz. After studying first at the university of Erfurt, he gained his Masters degree from Wittenberg university in 1552 and later...
(1564).
Some variations depend on the version of the fable that is being recorded. In the version by Samuel Croxall
Samuel Croxall
Samuel Croxall was an Anglican churchman, writer and translator, particularly noted for his edition of Aesop's Fables.-Early career:...
(1732), which was widely followed, the uprooted oak is floating downstream and enquires of a reed how it has survived the storm. In George Fyler Townsend
George Fyler Townsend
Reverend George Fyler Townsend was the translator of the standard English edition of Aesop's Fables.Although there are more modern collections and translations, Townsend's volume of 350 fables introduced the practice of stating a succinct moral at the conclusion of each story, and continues to be...
's new translation (1867), the oak has fallen across a stream and asks the same question of the reeds there.
With the growing interest in landscape art
Landscape art
Landscape art is a term that covers the depiction of natural scenery such as mountains, valleys, trees, rivers, and forests, and especially art where the main subject is a wide view, with its elements arranged into a coherent composition. In other works landscape backgrounds for figures can still...
, many French artists availed themselves of the fable's dramatic possibilities, including the illustrator Gustave Doré
Gustave Doré
Paul Gustave Doré was a French artist, engraver, illustrator and sculptor. Doré worked primarily with wood engraving and steel engraving.-Biography:...
, who made two different woodcuts of a peasant struggling through stormy landscapes and another of a horseman unseated by the falling oak. Achille Michallon's landscape of 1816 (of which there is also a black-and-white print) is said to be inspired by the style of Jacob Ruisdael. Jules Coignet
Jules Coignet
Jules Louis Philippe Coignet was born in Paris in 1798 and died there in 1860. He was a noted landscape painter who had studied under Jean-Victor Bertin. He travelled a good deal in his own country as well as elsewhere in Europe and the East, and produced a considerable number of views...
's picturesque treatment in the Musée Jean de La Fontaine dates from the second quarter of the 19th century and is a study of different textures of light as it falls on the windswept reeds and the foliage of the fallen oak. This is dramatised even further in the Japanese woodcut version of the fable by Kajita Hanko, published at the end of the century in the Choix de Fables de La Fontaine, Illustrée par un Groupe des Meilleurs Artistes de Tokio (1894), which has an olive rather than an oak as subject. Contrasting light effects are equally the subject of Henri Harpignies
Henri Harpignies
Henri-Joseph Harpignies was a French landscape painter of the Barbizon school.He was born at Valenciennes. His parents intended for him to pursue a business career, but his determination to become an artist was so strong that it conquered all obstacles, and he was allowed at the age of...
's sombrely coloured drawing in the Musée Jean de La Fontaine. The fable was also included in the series of watercolours based on La Fontaine that was painted by Gustave Moreau about 1880.
The turn of the century saw a statue of the subject by Henri Coutheillas exhibited in Paris. It is now in the Jardin d'Orsay in Limoges and contrasts a swaying female nude with the grizzled giant clutching a broken branch in his hand who is tumbling at her feet. During the 20th century there were a number of prints made by prominent artists. They include Marc Chagall
Marc Chagall
Marc Chagall Art critic Robert Hughes referred to Chagall as "the quintessential Jewish artist of the twentieth century."According to art historian Michael J...
's etching
Etching
Etching is the process of using strong acid or mordant to cut into the unprotected parts of a metal surface to create a design in intaglio in the metal...
from his La Fontaine series (1952), Roland Oudot's coloured woodcut (1961) and Salvador Dalí's coloured print of 1974.
Musical Versions
In the 19th century, the singer Pauline Viardot set La Fontaine's fable for piano and soprano and was accompanied by Frédéric ChopinFrédéric Chopin
Frédéric François Chopin was a Polish composer and virtuoso pianist. He is considered one of the great masters of Romantic music and has been called "the poet of the piano"....
in the concert they shared in 1842. In the 20th century the fashion was for slang versions. One of the first appeared among the seven published in 1945 by Bernard Gelval which afterwards became part of the sung repertoire of the actor Yves Deniaud. It was followed in 1947 by the second volume of 15 fables célèbres racontées en argot (famous fables in slang) by 'Marcus', in which Le Chêne et le Roseau was included. While this keeps fairly closely to La Fontaine's text, Pierre Perret
Pierre Perret
Pierre Perret , is a French singer and composer. Pierre Perret resides in the city of Nangis.- Biography :...
's 1990 rap version is a looser adaptation of the fable into a series of quatrains with a refrain
Refrain
A refrain is the line or lines that are repeated in music or in verse; the "chorus" of a song...
in between. The mighty oak 'stacked like the Himalayas' talks down to the reed in its marsh where 'up there the winds whizz and down 'ere's rheumatiz' (En haut t'as le mistral en bas les rhumatismes) but his pity is rejected and the fate soon to overtake him foretold. Cartoons were eventually made of these versions and released on DVD under the title The Geometric Fables; "The oak and the reed" appeared in volume 3 of the series (Les Chiffres, 1991).
In 1965 a poetic version by Peter Westmore was included as the last piece in Edward Hughes' Songs from Aesop's Fables for children's voices and piano. Two groups from Quebec have made use of the fable more recently. The deathcore band Despised Icon
Despised Icon
Despised Icon was a Canadian deathcore band from Montreal, Quebec. Formed in 2002, the band is notable for the use of two vocalists; Alexandre Erian, takes use of a mid-range screaming technique, and Steve Marois for the low growling vocals, and high pitched screamed vocals...
recorded their version on the album Consumed by your Poison in 2002. The grunted lyrics parallel La Fontaine's narrative: the reed rejects the protection offered by the oak for its own pliable behaviour. After the storm 'The one who thought himself so strong now among the dead belongs' (Celui qui se croyait si fort réside maintenant parmi les morts). There is also a folk-rock adaptation by Les Cowboys Fringants
Les Cowboys Fringants
Les Cowboys Fringants are a popular band and cult phenomenon from Quebec, who perform Québécois néo-trad music , the band also draws on Country music. They have gained an international underground following, especially in France, French-speaking Belgium and Switzerland...
recorded on their 2008 album L’Expédition. The lyrics emphasise how holding to one's point of view isolates individuals but seem to recommend the reed's strategy for survival in the words of the refrain that one must 'fall to rise again' (tomber pour se relever) repeatedly. Another musical interpretation of the fable is Michael Galasso
Michael Galasso
Michael John Galasso was an American composer, violinist, and music director.-Film Scores:...
's incidental music for the segment based on the fable in Robert Wilson
Robert Wilson (director)
Robert Wilson is an American avant-garde stage director and playwright who has been called "[America]'s — or even the world's — foremost vanguard 'theater artist'". Over the course of his wide-ranging career, he has also worked as a choreographer, performer, painter, sculptor, video...
's production of Les Fables de La Fontaine for the Comédie-Française
Comédie-Française
The Comédie-Française or Théâtre-Français is one of the few state theaters in France. It is the only state theater to have its own troupe of actors. It is located in the 1st arrondissement of Paris....
(2004).